Mauritius has obtained a 7.9 million-euro grant from the European Union (EU) in a bid to help deploy the island’s health strategy more effectively.
At a signing ceremony on Friday in Port Louis, Health and Wellness minister Kailesh Jagutpal, said the support provided by friendly countries such as the EU “considerably helps to complement the courageous measures taken at the level of the government in order to respond to the risks associated with the pandemic.”
According to the minister, the financial assistance from the EU will enable Mauritius “to increase its screening and medical care capacities and also to further professionalise Mauritian front-line employees”.
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He said that Mauritius is today a Covid-safe country and the government is working diligently to preserve this status while strengthening local capacities to face possible threats of this type.
The EU Ambassador to Mauritius and Seychelles, Mr Vincent Degert, stressed that the EU has reoriented the assistance programme for the public health emergency, which is a necessity that was imposed following the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The three main thrusts of the agreement, called ‘Reinforcing Health Systems in Mauritius (REHSIMUS)’, as defined in the EU action programme, are namely: detect, treat and reinforce,” he said.
He added that the goal is “to strengthen screening capacities with the objective of increasing by 50 per cent, and also to increase treatment capacities, in order to go from 67 emergency beds to 84”.
Mr Degert explained that the objective is to redefine the protocols in public health institutions and then train all staff on the application of these protocols.
He also announced that the EU has signed with the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) and the French Development Agency (FDA) an agreement of 9.3 million euros to help strengthen epidemiological surveillance in the Indian Ocean.